Göttingen 2012 – scientific programme

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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 13: Schwarze Löcher – Lösungen III

GR 13.1: Talk

Thursday, March 1, 2012, 09:50–10:10, ZHG 002

Spectroscopy of Gravity — Hartmut Abele¹, Thomas Bittner¹, Gunther Cronenberg¹, Hanno Filter¹, Peter Geltenbort², •Tobias Jenke¹, Hartmut Lemmel¹, and Martin Thalhammer¹ — ¹Atominstitut TU Wien, Wien, Österreich — ²Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, Frankreich

This talk is about a test of the Newtons Inverse Square Law of Gravity at micron distances by quantum interference with ultra-cold neutrons deep into the theoretically interesting regime.

The method is based on a new resonance spectroscopy technique related to Rabi spectroscopy, but it has been adapted to gravitationally bound quantum systems. By coupling such a quantum system to mechanical vibrations, we observe resonant transitions, devoid of electromagnetic interaction.

As Newtonian gravity and hypothetical Fifth Forces evolve with different phase information, the experiment has the potential to test the equivalence principle and Newtons gravity law at the micron scale. This experiment can therefore test speculations on large extra dimensions of sub-millimetre size of space-time or the origin of the cosmological constant in the universe, where effects are predicted in the interesting range of this experiment and might give a signal in an improved setup.